Discipline:

Sociology

Investigators:

Dr Monique Mulholland, Dr Fida Sanjakdar (Monash University), Dr Tessa Opie (inyourskin consulting) 

Summary:

This project addresses the problem that sexuality needs to more adequately speak to the broad range of religious and cultural diversities in Australian classrooms.

Despite this sustained critique of sexuality education, very little empirical work has been undertaken in the Australian context that centres the voices of young people.

This project has interviewed young people from different cultural backgrounds, and seeks to address 1) what they identify as main oversights of sexuality curriculum and 2) how curriculum and resources might better address their needs.

Grants:

• CHASS internal funding

Category:

Sex and relationships education

Discipline:

Sociology

Investigators:

Dr Jessie Shipman (Chief Investigator, Nursing and Health Sciences), Dr Monique Mulholland, Dr Stefania Velardo (CEPSW), Dr Nina Siversten (CNHS), Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard (CNHS), Dr Eva Kemp (CMPH), Ms Olivia Bellas (CMPH)

Summary:

The onset of menstruation (menarche) is an important developmental and clinical indicator of girls’ physical, nutritional, and reproductive health.

A significant proportion of girls are reaching menarche several years earlier than average, and evidence reveals that a large population of girls has already menstruated before being introduced to the subject through formal reproductive health education.

This project aims to explore how the needs of girls experiencing early menarche are addressed in SA primary schools. 

Grants:

• Flinders Foundation Grant 

Category:

Sexual health

Discipline:

Sociology

Investigators:

Dr Zoei Sutton

Summary:

This project qualitatively explores how stakeholders (landlords, advocates, housing providers and other frontline workers) and tenants negotiate and experience pet-friendly housing in order to inform better pet-friendly housing policies and practices.

The chosen research site (South Australia) is governed by ‘pet un-friendly’ policy, which sees landlords and other housing providers largely able to reject multispecies families without consequence.

The project uses qualitative interviews to explore: 

1. How housing providers, tenancy support workers and other stakeholders negotiate pet friendly housing. 
   
2. How tenants with pets experience finding and occupying accommodation, including the impacts on human-animal relationships.
   
3. Potential improvements to policy and practice that would better support the effective housing of tenants with pets. 
   

Partner organisation: Safe Pets Safe Families. 

Grants:

• Society for Companion Animal Studies (UK) Pump Priming Fund

Category:

Human-animal studies

Housing inequality

Discipline:

Sociology

Social work

Investigators:

Associate Professor Kristin Natalier (CHASS), Dr Carmela Bastian (CEPSW), Professor Sarah Wendt (CEPSW)

Summary:

Domestic and family violence shelters offer an as yet under-developed opportunity to create a safe space for children to share their experiences, and for service providers to respond to children’s needs and identify and set in place appropriate support services in a timely fashion.

This research is focused on building sector capacity to effectively support children through the development of a child-centred practice approach in South Australian Domestic and Family violence shelters.

With an expanded understanding of their child-referenced role, DFV shelters have the capacity to put in place the foundations for effective supports for children over the longer-term.

It is conducted in collaboration with the newly constituted South Australian Domestic and Family Violence Consortium Alliance. 

Grants:

• The Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation of South Australia

Category:

Children’s wellbeing 

Domestic and family violence 

Discipline:

Sociology

Social work

Investigators:

Associate Professor Kristin Natalier (CHASS), Professor Sarah Wendt (CEPSW), Dr Carmela Bastian (CEPSW), Associate Professor Michelle Jones (CEPSW), Dr Kate Seymour (CEPSW)

Summary:

There are currently around 45,000 Australian young people living in state (out-of-home) care. Many experience trauma, loss, placement instability and a feeling that they do not belong.

Flinders researchers are partnering with Department for Child Protection, Anglicare South Australia and Life Without Barriers to respond to their experiences.

This project aims to determine how conceptions of home can enhance an understanding of and responsiveness to young people’s needs in state care.

It expects to generate novel data on home for young people in state care and for the first time develop a home-centred approach to supporting young people across multiple care contexts.

Expected outcomes include developing and evaluating home-centred care principles, practice guidelines and an online training module.

These should provide benefits including better experiences and placement stability for young people, effective training for carers and evidence-informed strategies guiding the work of service providers and governments, with the potential to improve young people's life chances.

Grants:

• ARC Linkage Project 

Category:

Children’s wellbeing 

State care 

Discipline:

Sociology

Social work

Investigators:

Professor Sarah Wendt (CEPSW), Associate Professor Kristin Natalier (CHASS), Dr Kate Seymour (CEPSW)

Summary:

In Australia and internationally, there is currently no sustained research on the nature of DFV work, and this workforce remains largely invisible.

This project aims to generate an evidence base on the nature of domestic and family violence (DFV) work and the implications for the DFV workforce across victim, perpetrator and Aboriginal specialist services.

Using the innovative method of rapid ethnography, this project expects to provide a comparative understanding of DFV work and workforce practices and requirements.

Expected outcomes include workforce development strategies that are responsive to the context and needs of DFV work.

Given the high social, health and economic costs of DFV, investing in the DFV workforce has national benefits including improved services and better client and worker wellbeing.

Grants:

• ARC Discovery Project 

Category:

Work and employment

Domestic and family violence  

Discipline:

Sociology

Investigators:

Associate Professor Michelle Gander

Dr Fleur Sharafizad (ECU, Perth)

Summary:

Senior academic management roles at universities now include responsibilities for significant budgetary and people management, international student recruitment, and external engagement, as well as traditional activities such as research, teaching and learning, and the student experience.

Although multiple ad-hoc leadership development courses are being established in universities, there is little evidence that they are preparing leaders to take on these changed management roles in the academy.

Additionally, the gender balance in these senior management positions remains stubbornly low.

This project aims to:

1) understand the academic leadership development environment in Australia,

2) investigate the corollary in large corporations (especially for developing C-suite executives), and the public sector and

3) compare and contrast women Vice Chancellors’ careers with CEOs and Senior Executives in the public sector to draw out learnings for gender equity in the senior executive of universities.

Category:

Sociology of work 

Discipline:

Sociology

Investigators:

Dr Michael Scott, Dr Tully Barnett

Summary:

This project investigates how emerging cultural entrepreneurs within the Creative Industries develop strategies to access private sector finance, and how they understand the funding of portfolio careers.

Specific focus is on the puzzle of how money (public/private/philanthropic) for career development is accessed (or not), and how this money is understood as ‘special monies’, including the specific injunctions around its allocation to ‘enclaved’ commodity production:  a fashion collection, a portfolio of images, a resume of performances or productions.

Grants:

• CHASS internal funding

Category:

Sociology of work in twenty-first century 

Discipline:

Sociology

Investigators:

Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu, Emerita Professor Kathy Mack, Professor Jill Hunter (UNSW), Professor Prudence Vines (UNSW), Professor Natalie Skead (UWA), Associate Professor Kylie Burns (Griffith), Professor Cate Warner (UTAS), Professor Richard Kemp (UNSW), Associate Professor Teres Henning (UTAS)

Summary:

This project aims to address the human, juridical and financial costs of judicial officers’ work-related psychological harm.

This harm is implicated in early retirement, sick leave and suicide. It threatens appropriate courtroom conduct, procedural fairness and impartial adjudication.

The project seeks to generate new knowledge of the stress judicial officers experience and the individual and institutional mechanisms for managing stressors, combining socio-legal and psychological approaches.

Expected outcomes include evidence-based understandings to inform recruitment and retention strategies specific to this highly specialized workforce.

This should provide significant benefits for judges’ work capacities and courts' delivery of justice. 

Courts and the judiciary constitute a key institution in Australia. The Judicial Research Project at Flinders University led by Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu and Emerita Professor Kathy Mack [BGL] uses various empirical research strategies, including interviews, surveys and observation studies, to undertake wide-ranging research into the Australian judiciary.

The Project research is conducted and reported independently of the courts and government. Project findings provide new knowledge and valuable insights addressing important scholarly and public policy questions, especially the changing nature and organisation of judicial work, concerns about the meaning of judicial impartiality, and tensions between judicial independence and accountability.

Grants:

• ARC Discovery Grant 2022-2024 DP220100585

Category:

Socio-legal research 

Discipline:

Sociology

Investigators:

Dr Zoei Sutton, Dr Josephine Browne, Mr Alex Hill, Associate Professor Gavin Smith, Ms Fiona De Rosa, Ms Nita Alexander, Dr Chantelle Bayes, Professor Nik Taylor, Ms Kate Macintyre, Ms Katherine Calvert, Ms Melissa Laing

Summary:

This project draws on sociologies of everyday life to highlight the often taken-for-granted multispecies relations that already exist in our homes.

Multispecies Homescapes will invite participants to re-examine their relationships with other animals in everyday life by taking photos of nonhuman creatures in their homespace and submitting their observations to a moderated webpage hosted within the TASA website.

The project aims to capture:

1) who is included in (human) narratives of multispecies homes, and

2) how different species in Australian homes are encountered and represented.

Grants:

• The Australian Sociological Association Thematic Group Major Support Grant  

Category:

Human animal studies 

Discipline:

Interdisciplinary - College of HASS, BGL and CSE

Investigators:

Professor Beverley Clarke (CI), Professor Kirstin Ross, Associate Professor Cassandra Star, Dr Zoei Sutton, Dr Melinda Dodd

Summary:

This project investigates the efficacy of bushfire action plans of the elderly living independently in high bushfire danger areas. It will explore:

a) interpretations of 'early evacuation'

b) commitments to evacuating early

c) the scope of bushfire action plans and

d) the capability of participants to enact plans.

Information will be collected through interviews with elderly people, representatives from aged care facilities, service providers, and focus groups with emergency responders.

Findings will assist councils and emergency services to: design messaging specific to this group; and to develop targeted strategies and enhanced integration with aged care services, both empowering and improving the resilience of this vulnerable group.

Grants:

• Australian Government Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants Program

Category:

Disaster resilience 

Environmental management

Discipline:

Sociology

Investigators:

Dr Joshua Kalemba

Summary:

This project will explore migrant young workers' experiences of engaging in digitally mediated gig work. Focusing on migrant Black African youth in South Australia, and by drawing on a qualitative research methodology this project will produce new knowledge on the opportunities and constraints these young people face when engaging in digitally mediated gig work.

Expected outcomes include the development of a conceptual framework for understanding the experiences of young workers who engage in digitally mediated gig work in the sociology of youth.

This framework and the empirical data from the project will provide resources for stakeholders interested in improving the working conditions of digital platform workers.

Grants:

• CHASS Research Grant Scheme

Category:

Sociology of work

Sociology of youth

Race